In a filing Friday in federal court in Washington, Apple said it gave the U.S. Justice Department “competitively sensitive" documents and that allowing lawyers inside Google to see the information would result in “material harm" to Apple. Concerns about such disclosures have emerged since the government sued Google for allegedly abusing its power to thwart competition. The Justice Department and Google have clashed over the extent of access to information collected by the government before it sued. Google pays Apple billions of dollars a year to make its search engine the default browser option on iPhones and other products, according to analyst estimates. “Disclosure of this information to Google would directly implicate future business dealings between Apple and Google, provide Google with a substantial advantage over Apple in negotiations, and potentially disadvantage competitor search engines that negotiate with Apple and other software providers," it said.

Source: Mint November 20, 2020 23:03 UTC